H 1ftBHffiHH —IHE11 wBÈÈH m «Il WÊÊKË ni IIp |hS jijiI I mm ÉMWk Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 http://www.archive.org/details/revueceltique50pari REVUE CELTIQUE c / ï ^7> <> / FONDÉE PAK 9 H. GA1DOZ 1870-1885 û? CONTINUÉE PAR tri H. D'ARBOIS DE ] U H A IN VI II. H 1886-iQTO DIRIGÉE PAK J. LOTH Professeur honoraire au Collège de France Membre de l'Institut AVEC I K CONCOURS DH E. EUNAULT M.-L. SJŒSTEDT J. VENDU Y ES Professe ir honoraire Directrice d'Études Professeur à la Faculté à la F-scnlté des Lettres à l'École Pratique des I.ettrts de Paris tic Poitiers des Hautes-Études Membre de l'Institut ET DE PI.USIKUKS SAVANTS FRANÇAIS ET ETRANGERS Année 1933. — Vol. L PAK1S LIBRAIRIE ANCIENNE HONORÉ CHAMPION e ), QUAI MAI. AQUAIS (6 ) •933 £87348 THE ANXALS OF CONNACHT (R. I. A. Stowe C III i) INTRODUCTION I The chronicle whiclTwe are hère beginning to print is eon- tained in the Royal Irish Academy MS. Stowe C III I. It lias been commonly known, at least since /818, as The Aimais of Connacht. There is no title or ineipit in the AÏS,, and this name suits the work at least as well as an)' other that might be invent- ed for it. About ioo years out of the 321 covered by this recoid were printed, from transcripts, in 1871 to supply the long hiatus in The Annals of Loch Ce ; but the text has never before been edited completelv or from the original. The text is written in double columns, with ample mar- gins, on vellum, the average size of the page being 28 1/2 X 21 cm., and ot the column perhaps 21 x 8; but a good many shorter, irregularly shaped leaves are used at inter- vais. The folios are numbered 1 to 90. Fo. 71 is a strip the saine width as the normal pages but not quite 7 1/2 cm. high, written on the recto in Unes extending across from the left to the right margin, the verso being blank. Between i'î. 26 and 27 there is an unuumbered leaf. Hère and in_ niy running indication of folio and column I hâve called this leaf Folio 26*, so as to facilitate référence to the subséquent part of the book ; thus whenever in this édition I refer to a folio ot the MS. I mean the folio bearing the number quoted. The last rive leaves aie a good deal worn away at the inner edge ; the damage extends into the written column, and the script is further obscured by the leaves having been coarsély pasted Revue Critique, !.. i 2 A. Martin Freeman. down on stripsof canvas for binding into the volume. Through- out the earlier and larger portion of the work the text is abundantly paragraphed, and for the most part the division is made according to sensé, though occasionally it is fanciful. The practice of putting each event, and sometimes each épisode, into a paragraph has obvious advantages and has been adopt- ed throughout ihis édition. Especially in the case of the obituary notices and similar brief entries it is hoped that the use of separate, nnmbered paragraphs will be found a handv innovation. The contents are as follows. The history begins at A. D. 1224 and is continous as far as the first entry for 1378, except for a curious gap of threelines on fo. 8, near the end of 1235, and blank spaces of about the same length on fo. 13, at the end of the years 1248 and 1249. Hiatus I, 1378-84. At the end of fo. 41 the text breaks off in the word ard\ccmstapla\ and the first words on the next folio àveoidcbi'fcli Catrich Fina Banogi, which are part of a sen- tence recording the death of Ruaidri mac Toirrdelbaig Ui Chon- chobair, of the plague, in 1384. Hiatus II, 1393-98. The next break occurs after onlv two folios, fo. 43 ending, after about two thirds of a column for 1393, with the word quieuerunt (which, if it belongs to what précèdes, is a mistake), and fo. 4^ beginning with iquitn-oct, (for which I hâve not been able to discover a context in other Annals), is mediis rébus 1398. It is unfortunate that both thèse gaps corne in the portion of the record which is not doubled by ALCé; for they are both manifestly gaps in our MS, and migbt well hâve been supplied from the parallel text. Hiatus III, ij.27-32. The same remark applies possibly, but with modification, to the ne.\t break, at ft. 55-56, since this also occurs before the original part of the ALCé MS. becomes available once more; but this time the tacts are not nearly so clear. The disturbance in the normal order of the text is first shown at the opening lines of the year which begins on fo. )>, col. c. Hère enough space is teft in the first two lines to accommodate ail the usual calendarial data, in the curt The Annah of Connachl. 3 mariner of their appaerance for the last few folios, but the only facts written in are Caïann Enair and M . cccc°. v° (mistake for m. cccc. xx. v : it is probably an insignifkant coïncidence that in the two years immediately preceding 'xx' has been omitt- ed on the line and added above). Small spaces are left blank before and after the last sentence in this short Annal. The year is headed : Caïann Enair Mairt. cccc . next for M°. xx°. v ; there are no blanks, and no further particulars of this kind are added. Similarly the following vear is headed : Caïann Enair for Cetain. M°. cccc°. xx°. vi. This is followed by two short entries, less than five lines; after this a full third of a column is left blank. A new year begins wilh fo. 55, headed Caïann Enair for Dardain 7 aili. x.furrim cccc. .v.v.v. It will be observed that the Age of the Moon, for which the space before the vear-date was left in the first of the years under discussion, has reappeared, but no further chronologic- al data. The next year (which foliows after a blank space of only two lines) is 1434 and does not enter into our problem. This is, that between 1424 and 1434 we hâve four short : (leg. bis Annals 1) 1405 1425); 2) T425 ; 3) 1426 and, after a blank space, 4) 1430. Now the week-day of the first ot January, which is given for 2), 3) and 4) and can be certainlv supplied for 1), shows thèse years to be rightly 1425, 1426, 1427 and 1433. This dating is supported by certain of the entries, for instance, the éclipse of the sun in 4). I hâve no explanation to offer of the dating of the last year by the scribe is as 1430 ; in ail probability it a mère slip, like the error in 1); but it seems to me that the remaining facts, espeeially the long blank space after 3), point pretty distinctly to the con- clusion that this gap in the record arises not from the loss of a leaf or leaves out of our MS. but from a failure. at first partial and then complète, in the materials from which ihe chfonicle was compiled. From this point (143^) the text is complète to the end. The spaces left blank at 1479 (for which see below) are not to be regarded as indicating hiatus ; and it is to be noted that where ALCé shows a break in the record of 1538 there is 110 sign of any such thing in our text. Hennessy says (ALCé ii 4 A. Martin Freeman. 314 note) : "The contents of three lines following this hâve been erased. A corresponding blank occurs in the Annals of " Connacht. Stowe C iii 1 shows no erasure hère, and the words ocus nie, which in ALCé leave the sentence incomplète, are absent. It may be that the whole passage in ALCé was entered in error and that thèse two words ought to hâve been erased with the rest. The chronicle proper ends on fo. 90, about two thirds of the way down col. b, at the end of the record for 1544. But there follows immediately an entry dated 1562, in différent ink and by a différent hand, though one ofvery much the same type as that of the last scribe. There are twelve lines of this writing in the remaining part of the column, and eleven more were added overleaf, but thèse are now much rubbed and not more than half legible. The book has no finit or colophon. II The manuscript came into the possession of the Royal Irish Academy after the purchase by the British Government, in 1883, of the Stowe MSS. from the Earl of Ashburnahm, when the volumes written in Irish, together with certain others of local interest, were sentover to Ireland. Thèse MSS. had previously formed part of the collection made by the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, and were originally brought together by Charles O'Conor, of Belnagare,Co. Roscommon. In 1818-19 appeared Bibliotheca MSS Stoiuensis, bv Charles O'Conor the younger, which contains what is, so far I know, the only printed description of our MS. The article (i 73-77), which almost deserves to rank among the minor curiosities of literature on account of its strange inaccuracv, consists essentially of a panegyric of the chronicle and an attack on Grose's Antiquilies of Ireland; but it is prefaced bv the state- c ment: the written pages are 174, beginning with the year 1223 and ending with 1562'.